We know a lot about how animals protect themselves against scary big predators, but not quite so much regarding how they keep safe from smaller enemies such as pathogens and parasites, both by instinctive avoidance (ecology of disgust) and also by behaviours that can be described as self-medication.
I've rounded up a few recent examples from this underappreciated part of ecology and poked at the question of where in human evolution ecology ends and the history of medicine begins.
The resulting feature is out now:
Animal health services
Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 9, 8. May 2023, Pages R333-R335
FREE access to full text and PDF download
See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2023.
I'm not on Instagram myself, but I believe if you follow CurrentBiology there, you'll find my features highlighted there as well.
UPDATE 8.5.2024: A report concerning an orangutan applying a known medicinal herb to a wound has just come out a few days before this feature moved to the open archives.
Great bustards (Otis tarda) have been shown to preferentially consume two species of plants during their mating season that may protect them from both parasites and pathogenic fungi. (Photo: © Carlos Palacín.)
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